


The Good That Comes From Wanting Things

by Allamarain



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22168735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allamarain/pseuds/Allamarain
Summary: The Time Lords are a cruel and vicious people. So why, of all the people on Gallifrey, does the Doctor miss them the most?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	The Good That Comes From Wanting Things

The Doctor walks through the ruins of her planet with plodding steps, her boots leaving clouds of dust. The only sound is the crunch of dirt under her feet. She can still smell the smoke, which casts a haze over the binary suns. How long has it been burning? The destruction obviously happened eons ago; why does it still burn? 

She’s accustomed to paradoxes but she’s not prepared for what’s in front of her. _Deja vu_ and unfamiliar, at the same time. It had been easier before, without a planet to grieve. There is no ignoring the smoldering ruins fill the sky, and acrid fumes fill her lungs. 

If she were a circuit board, she’d be overloaded. Anger laced with guilt clouded her hearts. If only she’d paid attention, if she’d realized who O was. She’d been so foolish. She could have stopped him. She shakes her head. She has no way of knowing if this happened before she met him, or after. She tried keeping him on a tight leash, tried for decades, and it wasn’t enough. There’s something else, tugging at her mind, like a kitten with a ball of yarn. She doesn’t know what it is, but viscerally, it’s what’s keeping her on the planet. Forcing her to move.

She walks and walks on autopilot, away from the TARDIS, into the Capitol. She doesn’t know how long it is-hours, days, weeks? She feels the passage of time, but doesn’t pay attention to it. Her throat is as raw as her hearts. Her legs ache. Her hands are stiff from being clenched into fists. She ignores all of these things. It doesn’t matter. Occasionally she stops at what’s left of a building, a house with no roof, a caved in dwelling. She tells herself she’s looking for survivors. She doesn’t expect to find anyone. Not really. But she needs to keep moving, keep acting, keep doing, because she doesn’t want to find out what will happen if she stops. 

Walking through the streets of the Capitol. Familiar outposts and meeting places. She can picture them now, filled with laughing patrons, smiling children, gone forever. Weariness fills her to the tips of her toes. How can she keep saving the universe if she can’t save her own planet? Of course, she hadn’t been here, had she?

 _You have a lot of explaining to do_. Yaz’s words. She should go back to Earth, pick up the fam. She keeps walking. She knows it’s dangerous to be alone, especially now, but she doesn’t care. Nothing is going to matter ever again. 

She keeps walking. She whips around for a moment as eerie silence gives way to a creak of metal, but it’s just another building that will eventually meet the same fate as everything on the Gallifreyan surface. She should be looking for answers. How did the Master destroy the planet? What is the Timeless Child? That’s what she’d normally be doing, jumping into action, looking for clues. But those questions feel so far away, they might as well be in a bubble universe of their own.

She doesn’t bother to take in her surroundings. It’s too much, she’s numb to it. But she walks. Why is she still here? What is she looking for?

She finds herself at the steps of the main building. It survives, barely. Slow steps, testing each one to make sure they don’t give way. Inside, stone covered hallways, carvings of the planet’s history etched in their surfaces. 

To the Panopticon. The hexagonal main hall of the Time Lords, with its impossibly high ceilings. The statues of the founders have fallen and shattered. Fallen and shattered, just like their real life counterparts. She lays on the cool marble floor, barely noticing the pieces of stone jutting into her back as she closes her eyes. After a while, she doesn’t feel them at all.

Why had she come here? Here, of all places? 

She sighs, thinking of all the lives lost. But her thoughts kept circling back to the Time Lords. 

_They lied to us. Everything we were told was a lie. The whole existence of our species built on the lie of the Timeless Child_. She’d reeled from shock, but in a way, it wasn’t a surprise. It would hardly be the first time the Time Lords had manipulated the universe. Manipulated _her_. They’d caused their own destruction, putting the sound of drums in the head of her best friend, driving them mad. Trying to tear the Time Vortex apart to ensure their survival. The carnage of the Time War, resurrecting soldiers to fight and die over and over and over again. The billions of years she was forced to spend in the confession dial. In this very room, they’d accused her of assassinating the President. 

_Do you know why you have to hide here at the end of time? You are monsters! You are hated!_ Clara’s words pop into her head, forgotten for so long. Clara, her dear, wonderful, Clara, who had seen the Time Lords in a way only an outsider can. With perfect clarity.

She shouldn’t even be grieving for the Time Lords, the rotten sods; she should be grieving for the Gallifreyans. For the children. There were so, so many of them, none of whom deserved this. But their deaths feel more like an abstraction. Can anyone contemplate a thousand, a million, a billion lives lost? Not really. Her family was already gone, gone a long time ago. Why are the Time Lords filling up every thought in her bloody head? They’re not worth missing. She doesn’t even like them. That was why she’d run away in the first place; to be rid of them. Is it the shared history, a common link among all of them? She doesn’t think so. At this point, she’s spent more time with humanity than the Time Lords, but she knows she wouldn’t grieve for them in the same way. And their absence now, she feels more acutely than ever before.

The only movement in the room is of her chest, expanding and contracting with each breath. The stillness is a stranger. Normally she gets restless if she stays in one place for too long. This incarnation is constant movement, kinetic energy personified. But she doesn’t know when she’ll move, or if she’ll move. It’s better this way. Let her TARDIS die in the desert. The fam will grieve, they’ll miss her, they might even be angry, but they’ll move on. They always do. They don’t need her anymore. She smiles at the thought of Yaz; she’s a brilliant cop, and she’s only going to get better. Graham’s moving forward now, no longer consumed by grief. She doesn’t know what he’ll do with her gone, but whatever it is, he’s going to be fine. Ryan’s going to be the best mechanic in Sheffield. Sweet, clever, persistent Ryan, he deserves so much better than losing his mum at a tender age and a dad who…

Her eyes fly open and she sits up, brain fizzing. 

_Ryan_.

Ryan, who waited hours for his dad at Grace’s funeral, even though he knew, deep down, his dad wasn’t coming. 

Ryan, who risked his life to save his dad, despite being abandoned and ignored, over and over. She’d been willing to accept Aaron’s death as collateral damage to get rid of the Dalek. Ryan hadn’t. Why not? 

She blinks. She’s so good at figuring out puzzles, but she feels like she’s missing half the pieces.  
She plays the scene in her mind, over and over. And then she remembers. 

_Not bad for a kid with dyspraxia_. 

Understanding washes over her. She’d been so thick. Ryan hadn’t been looking for love or attention; he’d been looking for approval. And so had she. Not as a president or as a war hero, but as _herself_. And the tears rolled down her cheeks as she realizes that now, she’ll never have it.

She stands up, brushing debris off her trousers and coat. She’s walking again. She stumbles on the steps of the Capitol building, taking them too quickly. Walking down the road, out of the city. Her feet are carrying her back to the TARDIS, but she doesn’t know what she’ll do, or where she’ll go. There’s nothing to be done about this place, no absolution to be obtained. But somehow, she knows there’s an answer. She can’t quite wrap her head around it yet. She keeps moving, thinking, like always, until it hits her. 

Her pace picks up until she’s nearly running. She slams the blue doors behind her as if she’s being followed. Her breath comes in gasps as she stares at the console.  
The lever is cool and smooth and made for her hands. Slowly, she pulls it down, and she’s off to meet her humans again.

Humans. Ordinary, small-brained, short-lived, brilliant humans. She shows them the universe, but they always show her so, so much more. She’d seen it many times. Humans keep killing and torturing and warmongering and subjugating and colonizing and abusing and not just surviving, but thriving, all the way to the end of the universe. They’ll show her how to survive.  
There’s hope. Not for Gallifrey, not for the Time Lords, but for her. 

Moments later, materializing in London, she’s losing her nerve. She can’t let the fam see her broken open; it’s too soon. She puts on her widest plastic smile, hoping they won’t notice the despair in her eyes. Deep breaths, trying to push away everything she’s seen and learned to the back of her mind. She’s a tightly wound thread, and the wrong word will unspool her. She steps out to three faces, a mixture of worry, annoyance, and relief. 

“All, right then,” she announces, bubbly as ever. “Who’s up for a proper trip?”

“You’re not going to say anything about what just happened?” Yaz is staring at her in disbelief, arms crossed. “Who was he?”

“He’s taken care of.” It’s a lie, of course, even to herself. No matter what she does, he finds a way to get free. “Everyone in!”

“He said you two go way back. Why didn’t you recognize him?” Graham isn’t moving. When she doesn’t answer, he asks. “Did he…regenerate?”

She freezes at the last word, stifling a gasp. Think of something else. Anything else. “Silly me, meet a lot of people, don’t remember all their faces. Very embarrassing, especially when you’re visiting the Royal Family.” She strides back into the TARDIS, fixing her eyes on the controls. She knows they’ll follow her, one by one. They always do.

If she keeps moving, everything will be all right. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Papapaldi for beta reading.
> 
> Title from _Bojack Horseman_ , S5x06, "Free Churro".


End file.
